


bread and butter

by sarsoor



Series: here we go [1]
Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: F/F, Outrageous, bread-baking AU?, idk what kind of AU that is, just a wall of fluff, just in case that was not clear every clarisse i ever write will always be plus-size, perhaps a way for me to finally write a fic that is not centered around percabeth, perhaps a way for me to vent my failures after attempting to bake my own bread, plus-size clarisse, they're baking bread
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:34:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29044677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarsoor/pseuds/sarsoor
Summary: Hello! This is the first in the series of short stories I'll be posting to fight through WIP writer's block. Clarisse and Reyna are both my favorite comfort characters so they will probably definitely be featured again. Anyway, please enjoy 3k words of dumb fluff and charged eye contact featuring a meddling Piper McLean.Thanks so much for reading!
Relationships: Clarisse La Rue/Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano
Series: here we go [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131344
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	bread and butter

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is the first in the series of short stories I'll be posting to fight through WIP writer's block. Clarisse and Reyna are both my favorite comfort characters so they will probably definitely be featured again. Anyway, please enjoy 3k words of dumb fluff and charged eye contact featuring a meddling Piper McLean.  
> Thanks so much for reading!

Reyna doesn’t know why she’s here. 

Or, well—she does. It’s because she cannot bake or cook or do anything in a kitchen to save her life. 

More accurately, she doesn’t know why she is here with Piper of all people, learning how to bake bread of all things. When she asked her friend to recommend her a cooking class she thought maybe it would be something like the basics—chopping and sautéing and other -ings that would help her in the day-to-day. 

But here she stands at a workbench next to her conniving friend, who is wearing a very self-satisfied smirk on her face. That is never a good sign. 

There are only eight people in the class, four workbenches, and Reyna and Piper are in the back corner, farthest from the front. The instructor has yet to arrive, which Reyna finds a bit odd until they finally do—a pair of arms latched onto two 50-pound bags of bread flour. And the woman carrying them does not even break a sweat. 

Reyna watches with intrigue as the woman drops the flour onto the metal table in front of her and then faces the class, looking them over with the sort of scrutiny usually reserved for drill sergeants surveying their new recruits; skepticism, annoyance, and a fair amount of disgust. Reyna bristles at this—it’s as if this woman wants her to fail, expects it. And while Reyna _knows_ she will end up failing, she does not appreciate the unfounded anticipation on this woman’s face. 

“You know you’re staring really hard at our teacher,” Piper whispers to her right and Reyna narrows her eyes as said teacher sheds her coat and reveals quite the strong set of arms. 

“I’m trying to figure her out,” Reyna mutters back. 

“What’s to figure out? She’s an angry bread baker.”

Reyna elbows her friend and Piper laughs gently and leans forward onto the workspace. The instructor’s eyes settle on Reyna and she narrows hers as their gazes meet, dark brown on hazel. The woman raises her eyebrows in a challenge and Reyna raises one back, crossing her arms over her chest. It would really help if this woman was not so—so—bold? So obviously fed up with her position and now taking it out on an innocent woman (Reyna) just trying to learn the simple craft of bread baking. 

But she cannot say she dislikes her, per se. In fact, she feels a grudging respect for the woman before her, who woke up at the ass-crack of dawn just to teach some hopeless idiots how to feed themselves. She feels her lips quirk up in a smile of their own accord, and the woman sends her a small smirk back. They seem to have reached an understanding. 

“Holy shit, the sexual tension between you two is palpable,” Piper whispers, and Reyna tears her gaze away from the instructor to glare at her friend. 

“Shut up, the tension is not sexual.”

“So you admit there’s tension.”

Reyna feels her nostrils flare and she glances at the instructor to find that she is busy tying an apron around her waist. She’s fairly tall, Reyna notes, and built sturdy and strong, her hips and waist wide-set, her stomach round. And, well, there’s the matter of her arms. The arms of someone who lifts 100 pounds of flour with minimal effort. Arms Reyna seems to be having trouble keeping her eyes off of. 

“God, just kiss her, already,” Piper remarks and Reyna inhales sharply. 

“I’m going to fucking murder you,” Reyna says in an undertone. 

“Before or after you make your move?”

“Before. That way you never get the satisfaction of thinking you were right.”

Piper smirks and Reyna forces back her grin. 

“Alright, everyone, we’re going to get started,” the woman says, and Reyna straightens her posture and faces forward. “My name is Clarisse and I’ll be your instructor today. We’ll be making two different types of bread, learning the basics of what it requires. Some of you may be used to cooking and improvising, but baking is a science, and it’s an awfully fickle one. There are so many things that can go wrong—if the room is too humid, if your yeast is old, if the gods look unfavorably upon you.” 

She earns a laugh from the people in the room and she smiles a tiny thing from the corner of her mouth, as if she’s resisting it, but that makes it no less genuine. Reyna wonders what she looks like when she smiles with her entire face, how it might change. Would her light olive skin, nicked with small scars and scattered with freckles, crinkle around her nose and eyes? Would her lips part, the apples of her cheeks rise? Reyna has the overwhelming urge to find out.

She is so lost in her thoughts that she absolutely misses everything the woman says, and before she can process it Piper is moving to the front of the room to collect flour. Reyna glances around and finds that everyone else is doing the same, so she grabs a large bowl from her bench and heads to the front of the room. Except everyone is carrying scales, which Reyna is certain she does not have, and how many grams of flour were they meant to get? 

She whispers Piper’s name furiously and Piper raises her eyebrows and steps around the people behind her to get to the back of the line beside Reyna.

“What?” Piper says.

“What are we supposed to do again?”

Piper grins widely, her dark eyes glinting triumphantly.

“Busy thinking about the bread baker’s arms, were you?” Piper remarks, and Reyna takes a deep breath.

“If I admit it, will you help me?”

Piper’s jaw drops and she cackles wildly, throwing her head back. The instructor—Clarisse—raises her eyebrows as she looks at the commotion, and goes back to measuring out her own proportions. 

“God, forget it, you’re so damn smug—”

“No, no, I’ll help, I will,” Piper promises, holding onto Reyna’s arm. “I just love being right.”

“Rat.”

Piper grins.

“We need 400 grams of regular bread flour and 400 grams of the dark one.”

“I only have one bowl.”

“Well, you’ll have to ask our teacher for another.”

Reyna inhales a sharp breath through her nose and crosses her arms over her chest, her glass bowl dangling dangerously from her hand. She does not want to seem incompetent, or uninterested, or any of the things approaching this woman and asking for an extra bowl will make her seem. Piper rolls her eyes and shoves her second bowl at Reyna, and before she can process it to say thank you, Piper approaches the metal table.

“Hey, Clarisse,” she greets cheerfully while Reyna watches in shock. “I need another bowl. Forgot mine.”

Clarisse eyes the second bowl in Reyna’s hands, then turns and hands another one to Piper.

“Pay attention, McLean,” she says, and Reyna knits her eyebrows.

“Wait, you two know each other?” Reyna asks, finally moving forward, and Piper purses her lips.

“Clarisse and I go way back,” Piper informs her, and Reyna narrows her eyes at her friend.

“Is that so?”

Piper nods, a self-satisfied smile on her lips, and Clarisse knits her eyebrows.

“What’s your name?” she asks, and Reyna straightens, smoothing the ends of her long ponytail.

“Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano.”

“Clarisse La Rue.” She pauses. “You didn’t tell me you were seeing anyone, Piper.”

Piper laughs loudly at that.

“I am not dating _Reyna_ ,” Piper says. “But I admit I did sign up for the couple’s discount, so…sorry.”

Clarisse eyes Piper for a few moments, the expression on her face murderous, but when she meets Reyna’s gaze she softens.

“You should probably measure out your ingredients now. Last one left,” she says.

Reyna starts and shakes her head to clear her thoughts and gets to it, measuring the flour meticulously. She has a pressing urge to get this right, to bake the most delicious, beautiful bread the world has ever seen. A loaf of bread so incredible that the gods of baking bow down to _her_. 

Naturally, she fucks it all up.

First, she forgets to add the sugar to her yeast. Then, she drops her bowl full of flour right off the table. After that, she seems to be doing well enough, but her dough is so wet it’s more like slime than anything. She adds flour until it somewhat resembles something that could possibly turn into bread, then turns it out onto her table only to realize that she forgot the yeast altogether.

Clarisse hates her.

She can tell from the way she watches Reyna, not-so-subtly announcing things to the class that specifically apply to the mistakes she’s made. _Don’t forget the yeast. Add more flour if your mixture is too wet. Don’t miss the table_. She wants to dump the stupid dough on Piper’s head and storm out of the room, but she is far too stubborn to give up. 

In her rage she measures out her flour, sets up her yeast with sugar and salt, mixes everything together, and dumps her stupid lump of dough out onto her floured table in a huff. Clarisse wanders over and raises her eyebrows, her hands folded behind her back, and Reyna blows a piece of hair that got loose from her ponytail out of her face.

“There’s your stupid dough,” Reyna says, her frustration outweighing whatever qualms she may have about proper manners. “Happy?”

Clarisse grins big enough for it to nearly reach her eyes, and the burning rage in Reyna’s stomach cools down to a gentle warmth that spreads to her chest.

“I am, actually,” Clarisse informs her. “Good work. Now you just have to knead it.”

Whatever rush of satisfaction Reyna felt at Clarisse’s initial praise sputters and dies at that. She has no fucking clue how to knead bread dough.

“Uh, yeah. Right. I’ll just…knead it, then,” she says uncertainly, poking at the dough with her pointer finger.

Clarisse laughs a bit, not unkindly, and Reyna thinks she might collapse on the spot.

“You have to knead it, not poke it,” Clarisse says.

“I think Reyna would benefit from a demonstration,” Piper chimes in, expertly kneading her dough.

Reyna wants to strangle her.

“Alright, watch me,” Clarisse says, then sprinkles some flour over the top of Reyna’s dough. “So first you want to fold the dough in half like this, then use the heels of your hands to push it forward, yeah?” Reyna nods, forcing her eyes to stay on Clarisse’s hands despite the strain she can see in the woman’s forearms out of her periphery. “Now turn it 90 degrees, just like this, and repeat it. It’s just a rhythm and a pattern. Fold, push, turn. Make sense?”

Reyna nods again.

“Give it a try,” Clarisse offers, and Reyna does.

“Like that?”

“Um, well—”

Reyna heaves out a sigh as she accidentally rips a hole right through the dough.

“I think you’re going to have to guide her hand, La Rue,” Piper suggests, and Reyna tries to glare at her sideways.

“I will not be reenacting _Ghost_ in my classroom,” Clarisse says firmly. 

But then she meets Reyna’s concerned gaze and sighs heavily, then moves to stand next to her. They are nearly the same height, Clarisse a hair taller than she is. Her honey-colored hair is pulled up into a bun that has frizzed out at the top, and Reyna suddenly has the urge to smooth it back for her. She resists and does her best not to jump out of her skin when Clarisse’s arm brushes against hers.

“You just have to be a bit more gentle,” Clarisse says. “You’re not fighting with it, you’re embracing it, okay? Like it’s a good friend.”

“A good friend determined to fuck me over,” Reyna mutters bitterly, and Clarisse snorts.

“Yeah, well—all friends have their moments.”

Reyna smiles a bit and Clarisse moves the dough into her hands, their fingers brushing gently. Neither of them takes their hand back right away, the way they should. But bread doesn’t really behave itself either, does it?

“Your turn,” Clarisse says, her tone far gentler than it’s been all day. 

Someone else in the class calls out her name and she seems to come back to reality, straightening and removing her hands from the dough. Her fingers brush against Reyna’s wrist before she makes her way over to the others, and Reyna tries to ignore the burning beneath her skin in their wake. She also kind of wants to strangle the dumb idiot who can’t even make a simple bread dough (shut up) for ruining their moment, but she gets back to kneading and does not despair.

She still has a whole other loaf to screw up and ask for help with, after all. Not to mention the inevitable disaster that is bound to follow when Reyna will be forced to use an oven. 

When that time does come, Piper does her best to be as useless as possible so that Clarisse will have to come over and show them exactly what needs to be done. A tray full of water, two tins on the top shelf, two on the bottom shelf, close the door and _do not open it until the timer goes off no matter what_. 

Reyna is convinced that if Clarisse hadn’t told everyone they could take a break, leave the room to have lunch or do what they needed to, Piper would have done everything in her power to sabotage their bread just to get her two friends to talk. Instead, Piper drags Reyna over to where Clarisse sits, munching on an apple, and heaves herself up onto the table.

“So,” Piper says, and Clarisse shoves her off the metal table.

“This table is for cooking, not sitting,” she says, then grabs a Lysol wipe and scrubs it down.

Reyna snorts and Clarisse grins at her sideways, and she tries to ignore the flutter in her stomach. 

“God, are either of you you going to ask for the other’s number, or do I have to do it for you?” Piper groans.

Clarisse and Reyna both freeze, Clarisse’s cheeks turning a deep shade of red.

“Get out and don’t come back until you learn how not to be a huge bitch,” Clarisse says, and Piper flattens her lips together.

“Hmph,” she sniffs, raising her chin. “Seems as though I’ll never return.”

Reyna smiles widely and Piper sends her a conspicuous wink, then basically skips out of the room. Reyna stands around awkwardly, unsure of what to do with herself, and Clarisse twists around the apple in her hands.

“So—”

“I was—”

“Oh, you go,” Reyna says, feeling her face heat up, and Clarisse sucks in one of her cheeks.

“I was just going to ask how you know Piper,” Clarisse says, and Reyna cannot help but feel disappointed by this line of questioning.

“Oh.” She swallows. “Well, we were roommates freshman year and—”

“Sorry, I don’t care, I lied. I was going to ask you for your number,” Clarisse says, and Reyna stares at her for a moment before a massive smile overcomes her face.

“Were you now?” she says, crossing her arms over her chest, and Clarisse lowers her eyes.

“If that’s alright.”

“It’s definitely not alright.”

Clarisse looks up at her in surprise and Reyna purses her lips.

“I was hoping you’d skip straight to the part where you ask me on a date,” Reyna tells her, emboldened by her certainty. 

Clarisse settles at that and grins, leaning back in her chair.

“And why couldn’t you ask me yourself?” she challenges, and Reyna shrugs.

“I suppose I could have, if I wasn’t so worried that you thought I was an idiot.”

Clarisse knits her eyebrows.

“Why would I think you’re an idiot?”

Reyna scoffs.

“Maybe because it took me two hours just to get to the kneading stage of bread making,” she says. “I’m totally inept.”

Clarisse shakes her head.

“Do you know how many hopeless cases I see a day? So many your head would hurt. And they’re all far worse than you.” Reyna smiles the slightest bit. “That’s why you’re here, to _learn_. If I expected you to be good at it I wouldn’t be teaching you, would I?”

Alright. So she is understanding _and_ compassionate. Reyna most definitely does not want to kiss her in this empty classroom while the heat from all the ovens and the smell of fresh bread overwhelms her. Certainly not.

“That’s a fair point,” she says instead, her throat suddenly dry, and Clarisse nods, holding her eyes so intensely that—well, it makes her laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Clarisse asks, a tiny smile tugging at the corner of her mouth, and Reyna cannot stop herself.

“You just—remind me of me, I guess,” she says. “You always look angry until you don’t.”

Clarisse smiles sheepishly, her cheeks tinting pink.

“I have been told I’m intimidating,” she mutters. “I can’t help it if I fuckin’ hate everyone.”

Reyna laughs brightly and Clarisse smiles widely, with her whole face, and it is even more beautiful than Reyna expected. 

She’s going to kiss the woman she met not two hours ago in this classroom, isn’t she?

Reyna moves forward and leans onto the table on her elbows, and Clarisse mirrors her pose from her chair.

“So when are you taking me on this date?” Reyna asks, doing her best to tamp down her smile.

She fails miserably.

“Tomorrow,” Clarisse says. “Today. After class. The sooner the better.”

“Have you also been told you’re fairly impatient?”

“Why do you think I hate everyone to begin with?”

Reyna grins and their faces are so close that she can see flecks of green and blue in Clarisse’s hazel eyes, eyes that are open and warm and kind, so different from when they first fell on her. Eyes that keep dropping from Reyna’s to look down at her lips, framed with lashes the same golden-brown of her hair. Eyes that are moving close, close, closer, until Reyna’s own flutter shut as Clarisse’s nose brushes against hers. 

For a moment there is nothing but a hairsbreadth of space between their lips, and then there is no space at all, and Reyna sighs into their kiss like it’s the most natural thing in the world. She hadn’t realized how tense she was before, but she relaxes easily as her hand moves to hold onto the side of Clarisse’s neck and she pulls her forward; she just needs to get closer. Clarisse’s fingers dance along Reyna’s forearm for a moment before she pulls back and gives Reyna three short, quick kisses in succession.

“Piper’s going to be so fucking smug,” Reyna whispers as she presses her forehead into Clarisse’s. 

“Worth it,” Clarisse laughs breathlessly.

Whatever retort Reyna had planned shoots clear out of her head the moment Clarisse’s lips find hers once more, and Reyna cannot contain her smile.

Later, when everyone takes their bread out of the oven and Reyna finds that her loaves are flat, dense, and absolutely hideous, she feels nothing but utter joy overwhelm her. Clarisse laughs brightly, and every mishap that led her here instantly becomes so fucking worth it. 

Three hours well-spent, she thinks. She'll never have to worry about baking her own bread again.


End file.
